It all began with an FBI raid at the home of James Gordon Meek last April. Meek was a national security reporter for ABC News and for months afterwards few people knew the raid had happened. But Rolling Stone put a reporter on the story and by last October the magazine published a story which vaguely suggested Meek might be in the FBI’s crosshairs for some story he was working on. Here’s how the Rolling Stone story opened.

AT A MINUTE before 5 a.m. on April 27, ABC News’ James Gordon Meek fired off a tweet with a single word: “FACTS.”

The network’s national-security investigative producer was responding to former CIA agent Marc Polymeropoulos’ take that the Ukrainian military — with assistance from the U.S. — was thriving against Russian forces. Polymeropoulos’ tweet — filled with acronyms indecipherable to the layperson, like “TTPs,” “UW,” and “EW” — was itself a reply to a missive from Washington Post Pentagon reporter Dan Lamothe, who noted the wealth of information the U.S. military had gathered about Russian ops by observing their combat strategy in real time. The interchange illustrated the interplay between the national-security community and those who cover it. And no one straddled both worlds quite like Meek, an Emmy-winning deep-dive journalist who also was a former senior counterterrorism adviser and investigator for the House Homeland Security Committee. To his detractors within ABC, Meek was something of a “military fanboy.” But his track record of exclusives was undeniable, breaking the news of foiled terrorist plots in New York City and the Army’s coverup of the fratricidal death of Pfc. Dave Sharrett II in Iraq, a bombshell that earned Meek a face-to-face meeting with President Obama. With nine years at ABC under his belt, a buzzy Hulu documentary poised for Emmy attention, and an upcoming book on the military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the 52-year-old bear of a man seemed to be at the height of his powers and the pinnacle of his profession.

Outside his Arlington, Virginia, apartment, a surreal scene was unfolding, and his storied career was about to come crashing down. Meek’s tweet marked the last time he’s posted on the social media platform.

The surreal scene outside the apartment was an FBI raid. The story went on to note that Meek soon left his job and, though he had not been charged with any crime, had all but disappeared since the raid. But it turns out Rolling Stone had left out one very important fact. The author of the story, Tatiana Siegel, found out that Meek had been arrested in connection with an investigation into child pornography. But Rolling Stone‘s editor-in-chief, Noah Shachtman, didn’t want that in the story.

As edited by Rolling Stone Editor-in-Chief Noah Shachtman, however, the article omitted a key fact that Siegel initially intended to include: Siegel had learned from her sources that Meek had been raided as part of a federal investigation into images of child sex abuse, something not publicly revealed until last month…

In September, Siegel learned details of the raid from Meek’s neighbors, yet she felt the story was languishing. At a staff meeting late that month, Shachtman asked her what she was working on. She reminded him.

The next week, Shachtman stepped in to edit Siegel’s story. It was rare for him to do so for her work.

As a longtime national security reporter himself, Shachtman has periodically expressed to colleagues at various outlets his skepticism of the veracity of government sources. When Siegel detailed the seriousness of the allegations against Meek, Shachtman warned her against turning in a story that included the words “child pornography” in it.

Neither Siegel or Shachtman would speak about what happened next so NPR pieced the story together from interviews with others. Not long before the story was going to be published Siegel’s mother became ill and she had to step away. Shachtman promised to handle the last touches on the story and his final edit made some significant changes.

In the hours leading up to publication, Shachtman changed Siegel’s draft to remove all suggestions that the investigation was not related to Meek’s reporting. He left in the finding that federal agents had allegedly found “classified information” on Meek’s devices.

Siegel, whose mother died not long after the story was published, was apparently pretty upset about the edits. She knew why Meek had been arrested but the story with her name on it not only didn’t reveal the truth, it insinuated he was arrested for something relating to his work as a journalist. Siegel wrote a follow-up story in December which made it clear Meek had not been arrested in connection to his work. Still, it wasn’t until February that the true nature of Meek’s offense was revealed by another outlet. Hot Air had that story in the headlines at the time.

Again, Siegel and Shachtman didn’t speak to anyone at NPR for this story but it certainly sounds as if Shachtman took it easy on Meek, possibly because he was someone who was personally familiar to him, someone who traveled in the same journalistic circles. As for Siegel, she had a preexisting offer to move to a job at Variety (Variety and Rolling Stone are owned by the same company) and after this experience she decided to take it.